


5 Times Tony Bought Clothes for Pepper

by PhoenixFalls



Series: Just As They Wished It To Be [9]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5 Times, F/M, Marking, POV Female Character, People like cooking for Tony, Remix, Tony Stark is courting a sexual harassment lawsuit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2013-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-17 22:43:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhoenixFalls/pseuds/PhoenixFalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>. . .and one time Pepper bought clothes for Tony.</p>
            </blockquote>





	5 Times Tony Bought Clothes for Pepper

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Five Times Pepper Saw Tony Naked](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/25067) by Marie_Nomad. 



> Written for the [Avengers Remix](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/AvengersRemix) challenge.

**The first time Tony bought clothes for Pepper, she didn't touch them.**

It was 7 a.m. on the Monday morning of her first full week as Tony Stark’s P.A. and Pepper Potts was standing in her office, juggling her Venti Green Eye and the latest batch of contracts, and staring at a dove grey Dolce & Gabbana pantsuit with a cream silk blouse and a pair of black suede Zanotti pumps with 5-inch silver heels, all arranged artfully on her desk chair.

She knew that this was what she was looking at because there was a very helpful note, from Mr. Stark, explaining that her current wardrobe was “Absolutely unacceptable. Where do you shop, Target? You don’t pronounce it ‘Tarzhay’, do you? Because that’s a fireable offense, Ms. Potts.” It then went on at length about the colors she should wear — “You’re a summer, you need pastels and neutrals, no bright colors and for God’s sake don’t wear black” — and the best styles for her body type — “Work those long legs with cropped jackets and either slim-fit pants or pencil skirts” — and the fact that she would always need to get off-the-rack clothes tailored.

He had even “helpfully” included her measurements.

Pepper briefly considered tossing her coffee on the clothes, but she knew she’d never make it through this day without caffeine, so instead she set her armload down on her desk and wheeled the chair, outfit and all, briskly into Mr. Stark’s office. She then appropriated his chair, added “Sexual Harassment Workshop” to his agenda, and settled down to work.

She understood now why his previous P.A. had given her a pair of handcuffs. But brute force had never been Pepper’s forte. Instead, she was just never giving him his chair back.

It was, after all, ridiculously comfortable.

~I~

**The second time Tony bought clothes for Pepper, she didn't quit.**

It was 10 a.m. on the last Saturday morning of her first month as Tony Stark’s P.A. and Pepper Potts was again standing in her office, holding coffee (just a non-fat latte this time) and contracts, and staring at expensive clothing tailored to her measurements.

But this time it was a silk Carine Gilson babydoll in antique rose, with a matching robe just a shade darker. (Or so said the notecard tucked into the pocket of the robe.)

Pepper set her armload down carefully, ignoring the way her hands were shaking with anger. She spun her laptop around, logged in to the system, and used the override Mr. Stane had given her to access the building-wide PA system.

“Mr. Stark! I need to see you in my office immediately!”

She made sure she infused her voice with all the steely command her middle school principal had wielded when making similar announcements. She tapped out the time as she waited. 3 minutes 43 seconds meant he had been down in his workshop when she paged. As soon as he opened her door she opened her mouth to begin yelling, but the sight of him took all the wind out of her sails.

He was wearing nothing but a pair of gold boxers and flip-flops.

There was really nothing else to do. She picked up the pile of contracts, gripping tightly so that none of the papers would fall loose, and smacked him on the head with them. Using both hands.

“What. Did. I. Tell. You. About. This?!?” She punctuated each word with another smack. “You. Can’t. Pull. This. Shit!!!”

“Potts! Pottsy, I promise, I didn’t mean anything by it!”

“I don’t care what you meant by it—“

“This was just the first Saturday you were going to be in the office—“

“—because the effect always trumps your intentions—“

“—and I thought you maybe didn’t know about Sleepwear Saturday—“

“—and the effect of crap like this is a hostile work environment—“

“—and besides, I made sure they included a robe!”

“—the sort I shouldn’t have to. . . wait, what?”

He slowly lowered his hands from their defensive position around his head and looked up at her. “The robe? You saw that, right?” He pointed over her shoulder, eyes wide and guileless.

Pepper gaped, probably horribly unattractively, but she really did need a moment to process that statement. Her voice was faint when she managed “You can’t— really, you can’t think that the inclusion of a robe with the negligee you bought your assistant is enough to make it not sexual harassment. . . can you? You’re a genius, a self-reported genius, it’s true, but R&D agrees with your assessment, though I’ll admit most of them aren’t great at reading social interactions either. . .” Pepper trailed off, examining his face for any trace that he was joking. She couldn’t find any, and slowly turned to set the paperwork on the desk behind her.

But he still didn’t say a word, and just as the files touched the desktop she knew she was being played. She whirled and threw the paperwork in his face.

“You are such an ass!” was all she managed to get out before she dissolved into giggles.

A low chuckle joined her, and there was the patented Tony Stark smirk, warmed by honest delight at her reaction. Mr. Stark grabbed for the few pieces of paper still fluttering around him, then bent over to pick up the rest, still chuckling.

Pepper absolutely did check out his ass. Served him right.

She let him pick everything up as payment for the trick, and glared at him until he shuffled it all back into the proper order. That done, she ventured, “So this was a hazing thing, right? You don’t really have a Sleepwear Saturday, do you?”

“Well,” he drawled, and Pepper heard the hint of mischief in his voice now, “we didn’t. . . but I really do think we ought to institute one now. For company morale!” And on that parting line he turned on his heel and started walking — almost running, really — out the door.

Pepper took a deep breath to cover her sudden desire to grin. She had to raise her voice, unwilling to chase after him. “We will do no such thing, Mr. Stark—“

“I told you before, call me Tony!” he threw over his shoulder as he passed through her door.

And this time, Pepper thought she might take him up on that offer.

~I~

**The third time Tony bought clothes for Pepper, she didn't notice.**

It was just after midnight on the anniversary of her first year as Tony Stark’s P.A. and Pepper Potts was standing in her bedroom, a hot toddy steaming on her bedside table and her suitcase open on the bedspread, staring at expensive clothing that both was and was not hers.

She had just gotten home after a whirlwind week-long trip to Europe, following Tony around as he pitched a new guided missile system to various militaries and picking him back up after he collapsed, wasted, into anonymous hotel beds with anonymous women. She didn’t think she would ever un-see the sight that greeted her on the morning of the fifth day, Tony completely naked, posing on the hotel balcony for a pretty art school student. He had insisted on paying for the painting as well, though it was mediocre at best, and had ordered Pepper to package it personally for transport back to Malibu.

So she was very much looking forward to getting her things unpacked, taking a long hot shower, then sleeping late. Tony had given her the next day off, and while she wasn’t planning on taking advantage of that, she had no intention of heading to the office earlier than 10 a.m. But the first step in that plan had just taken a stark (ha!) detour, because when she picked up the stack of dirty blouses to move to her dry-cleaning bag she discovered that instead of the rayon-blends she had packed and worn, every single one of the blouses was now made of silk.

They looked exactly the same as her clothes — same cuts, same colors — but they clearly weren’t hers. She pulled out the suits and discovered they had been similarly substituted, nothing noticeable on first glance but a closer examination revealed much higher quality materials and workmanship. The shoes were still hers, thankfully, since she had finally gotten most of them broken in properly, but they had been buffed and shined until not even the faintest scuff remained.

Pepper sat down next to it all, heavily.

The first time she had dismissed as a well-intentioned but misguided gift. The second time she had dismissed as a joke, potentially in poor taste but so quintessentially Tony, now that she knew him better, that she had been charmed by it. But this was a third time now, executed with a subtlety she would have thought completely beyond the man. There was clearly something else going on here, some reason Tony wanted her to wear things he bought her.

He flirted with her. But he flirted with everything that moved, and even after the incident with the negligee Pepper had never felt that the flirting was at all targeted. It never had any intention behind it, any expectation of reciprocation. Whatever this was about, it wasn’t (directly) about sex.

Pepper stared at the clothes several minutes longer, grabbing her mug and sipping absentmindedly. If it wasn’t about sex, then that meant it was something complicated. Pepper hated complications.

She weighed her options. She could demand her old clothes back, but after going to this much trouble Pepper was reasonably sure Tony had had them destroyed. She could accept the new clothes, after yelling at Tony for his complete disregard for personal boundaries. Or she could accept the clothes full stop, never mentioning the incident to Tony again.

That last option was the one likeliest to produce interesting results — either of the first two would just shut Tony down, and Pepper would never figure out this puzzle if that happened. So option three it was.

And hell, Tony had managed to pull off the replacement on his own. Pepper practically had to schedule his showers for him; the fact that he had done all this work without Pepper even being aware of it was something she should reward.

~I~

**The fourth time Tony bought clothes for Pepper, she didn't care.**

They never talked about the clothes. Every business trip they went on together Tony somehow managed to sneak nicer versions of her clothes into her suitcase without Pepper’s notice, and Pepper just let it all slide. But she did begin to notice that on days when she was wearing one of the pieces of clothing Tony had replaced he was definitely more manageable.

When she was wearing any of the clothing he had replaced, Tony was. . . sweet. He moved through the schedule Pepper prepared for him with a minimum of fuss, even staying mostly on-time, and as they walked the halls or stood in the elevators he seemed to fall into her orbit, letting their hands or shoulders sway together and meeting and then holding eye contact when she spoke with him.

When Pepper wasn’t wearing the clothes he had replaced, but was wearing clothes that adhered to the rules he had laid out for her with that first suit, he complained quite a bit more, and pushed the limits of what tardiness Pepper found his business associates willing to accept, but still remained well inside Pepper’s personal space in those subtle ways she found inexplicably warming.

But Tony was a man, and his rules were all about making Pepper look as attractive as possible. He never considered that there were times when Pepper found it more effective to play down her looks, times when she could get better results for Tony and S.I. if the people she was dealing with thought of her as simply a mousy secretary. So sometimes she wore black, wore suit jackets just a little too loose and a little too long, even wore flats. And at those times getting Tony to do anything she asked of him was like trying to herd feral cats. He ignored her schedules entirely, locked himself down in his workshop and cancelled her access codes, and when she did finally corner him he shut down, shoulders closing off and twisting away from her, eyes distant and cold.

Pepper’s thirtieth birthday fell on one of those difficult days. She was still gathering evidence of Tony’s pattern, unwilling to believe her clothing really had that much of an effect on the man, and had worn a carmine blouse that exactly matched the leather in his roadster to test what would win out, his love of that color or his instruction that she shoudn’t wear anything brighter than a pastel. (The carmine also made her hair look redder, almost carroty, which she usually wouldn’t like, but she had a 3 o’clock meeting with Drexel Cord, and he always rolled over for redheads.)

Unfortunately, Tony’s petulance at her not following his instructions was apparently stronger than his love of his signature color, and she had a Tony-related headache within half an hour of the start of their day. By noon she had swallowed four aspirin dry, had destroyed another stress ball, and had raided her super-secret stash of Teuscher truffles, allowing herself an unheard of two.

Finally, when he took the analysis on public brand awareness and the frankly worrying grumblings of “war profiteering” that had popped up in more liberal sectors in the wake of the 2002 profits report — the analysis that Pepper and Avery had spent a significant portion of the last week compiling — and ordered her to do exactly the opposite of what she recommended, she snapped.

“Damn it, Tony! Do you know how many headhunters have approached me this month? Five. But did I take any of their more than generous offers? No. No, I stay here, putting up with your tantrums on my thirtieth birthday because I’m some kind of masochist—“

Tony’s eyes snapped to hers, wide with surprise. “Today’s your birthday?”

Pepper took a deep breath to keep from screaming. “That was not my point, Tony. My point was that you’re impossible, and if you’re just going to ignore—“

“No, but Pep, how come I didn’t know today was your birthday?”

“Because I didn’t tell you.”

Tony blinked, then he grinned slyly. “So. . . what’d you get yourself from me? Tropical island vacation? Spa package? Sex toys?”

“Nothing.”

Tony feigned horror, hands clasped to his chest. “Ms. Potts! What a terrible shirking of your duties you have just confessed to me! What kind of personal assistant would fail to arrange a birthday present for her boss’s most valued employee?”

Pepper tried (and failed) to ignore how much the appellation warmed her. It made it harder to pull on her serious face. “Accounts Payable would not approve a purchase of my own birthday present on my company card, Mr. Stark.” She held his eyes, feeling some of the knots in her shoulders loosen at being able to do so. She was better at hiding it than he was, but she really didn’t like it when they were fighting either. The relief made her bolder than was strictly professional. “Besides, I am perfectly happy with my current vibrator.”

Tony gave her the conspiratorial grin she loved best, the one that was reserved just for her, for when she surprised him by being on his side, by playing with him. “Now, now Pep, you may have a perfectly adequate general-purpose vibrator, but what about a g-spot vibrator, or a rabbit? Do you have any ben-wa balls, Pep? Are you into anal play? Because there’re lots of toys for that. What about pain? Getting tied up? There’s a multi-billion dollar industry out there designed for increasing your pleasure, surely you don’t have everything you could possibly want? And even if you do, there are always consumables, like lube, cleaning supplies, edible—”

“No. I am not going to allow Stark Industries to mediate my relationship with the sex toy industry, Tony.”

“Fiiiiine,” Tony pouted, then tapped the report that Pepper was still clutching. “Well, since it is your birthday, and you didn’t get yourself something from me, I guess we can do things your way today. Can’t have my most valued employee feeling unappreciated, after all.”

Pepper rolled her eyes. “Thank you, Mr. Stark. I’ll get on that right away.”

The rest of the day Tony was beautifully responsive to anything Pepper asked of him, so Pepper decided, as she let herself into her apartment a bit before 9pm, to call her birthday a win overall. She was somehow not surprised to find yet another high-end outfit tailored to her measurements waiting on her couch: this time it was a cream Versace pantsuit, a very pale peach silk blouse, a pair of Gianvito Rossi pumps in Tony’s beloved carmine, and a silk scarf with a pattern of antique roses in both the peach and the carmine to tie the whole ensemble together. There was, of course, a note in Tony’s handwriting saying “This is how you wear my red, Pep!” There was also a paper copy of an addendum to Pepper’s employment contract, stipulating that one of her duties from this day forward was the purchase of both birthday and Christmas presents for herself, and a (ridiculously generous) budget for that purpose, already signed by Tony and with little flags marking where Pepper needed to sign.

Pepper grinned to herself, signed the contract with a flourish, and resolved to wear the new outfit tomorrow.

~I~

**The fifth time Tony bought clothes for Pepper, she didn't look away.**

Then came Afghanistan.

Then came helping Mr. Stane — Obie, he insisted she call him Obie — hold S.I. together as Tony’s disappearance stretched out, days turning to weeks. Then came helping James pressure the military brass into sending out search party after search party, using outstanding S.I. military contracts as leverage. Then came the slow dying of hope, as weeks turned into months without any sign that Tony might still be alive.

Pepper took to sleeping with the antique roses scarf; it was the last piece of clothing Tony had picked out for her himself. Once he had added that clause to her contract, she had developed a habit of updating her wardrobe twice yearly on his dime, and he had seemed content with her just wearing clothes his money had paid for as long as she let him know which pieces were from him. It was much easier this way — Pepper no longer worried that she was going to come home to find an S.I. intern replacing her clothing on Tony’s orders — but with Tony gone (not dead, please God not dead) Pepper wanted to hold close her connection to Tony himself, not just his wallet.

Then came the call, one dark and dismal four a.m., that let her know James had found Tony, that James was bringing him home.

Pepper met them at the airport, watched James help Tony down the ramp, and didn’t even bother trying to stifle the ridiculous grin spreading across her face or blink away the tears that filled her eyes. Tony was back, maybe a little worse for wear (though no more beat-up than he routinely got down in his workshop), but still so much himself, eyes warm on her face, standing just one step closer than was strictly professional. Pepper couldn’t see the mysterious _thing_ in Tony’s chest that James had been freaking out over, but it couldn’t be that bad with Tony walking and joking like normal.

Of course, then came the press conference, Tony announcing he was completely changing the company direction without giving Obie or Pepper even the courtesy of a warning. Then came Pepper having to practically move into the Malibu house because Tony was refusing to leave his home workshop.

Then came Tony asking Pepper to put her entire fist in his chest, telling her she was all he had.

When Pepper sat down with the old arc reactor in its new trophy case and realized she had no wrapping paper, it hit her that he was all she had too — her always small family shrunk down to just a couple second cousins since her mom’s death three years earlier, her college friends busy with jobs and families of their own and mostly on the other side of the country anyway. She was friendly with her assistants, with Avery in particular; she was friendly with some of the department heads. But she always maintained that little bit of professional distance, and that meant that fruit baskets and gift cards were more appropriate presents when holidays and birthdays rolled around than anything she might need to wrap herself.

She finally borrowed some brown mailing paper from her downstairs neighbor to wrap the arc reactor, then she sat down with a glass of pinot grigio to think.

Eight years she’d been Tony Stark’s P.A. It wasn’t where she thought she’d be when she graduated from Harvard Business School twelve years earlier — most days it bore a stronger resemblance to some of her high school babysitting jobs than she would have expected — but it was immensely satisfying. During that time, Tony had gone from being her bratty, inappropriate, genius man-child of a boss to her bratty, inappropriate, genius man-child of a best friend. But the terror she had felt while Tony was missing was all out of proportion for even a best friendship, and Tony calling for her help when his chest was literally gaping open was a sign she didn’t think she could ignore.

She had never finished her birthday shopping trip. For seven years at Christmas and on her birthday she had bought herself business wear in Tony’s name, clothes he could see her in often but which still maintained that same bit of professional distance she had been maintaining in all her relationships. Maybe now was the time to change that, to let Tony close the gap between them.

And when she felt Tony’s eyes follow the fall of silk down the line of her back, rest on the curve of the dress just covering the swell of her hips and butt, when she saw his eyes darken and his cheeks flush when she said _he_ had bought the dress, she knew the timing was right. They didn’t quite kiss, then, but she could practically feel the moments counting down between them until they would.

~I~

**The first time Pepper bought clothes for Tony, he loved it.**

Their first Christmas as a couple, Pepper agonized over what to get for Tony. When she was just his P.A. it had been hard enough, but sometime during her first year he had mentioned, four whiskeys into a very long night, that he used to love the spice cookies his parents’ cook had made when he was little, and even though Pepper hated cooking it was such a surprisingly vulnerable little detail that she tracked the 86 year old woman to her little yellow house out in Staten Island and begged her for the recipe. Then Pepper had spent several of her rare days off making sure she could actually produce cookies that tasted right and weren’t burned to a crisp, and just before she flew home for the holiday she handed Tony a tin full of the 36 prettiest cookies from her batch of 72. He had been ecstatic, had grabbed a handful immediately and started to scarf them down, and so every Christmas since then Pepper had found a way to bake them for him.

Of course she was still planning on baking them this year, and somehow Tony had also talked her into trying to bake these peppermint crisps that he insisted James went crazy for, but the change in their relationship seemed to call for something more substantial than a gift of food.

Finally, with less than a week to go, she had a brilliant idea. She waffled for a few minutes on whether to go with her undergrad or grad school, but eventually decided that the cross-town rivalry was just too delicious to resist; she also had to pay almost double for expedited shipping. But on Christmas morning, when Tony opened up the box to reveal a [Harvard sweatshirt](http://www.theharvardshop.com/products/appliquesweatshirt) in his size and just gaped, speechless, Pepper knew she had chosen right. She took it gently from his hands, shook it out, found the proper hole and pulled it down over his head. While he struggled into the arms she ran her hands through his hair, enjoying the feel of it without gel, then she helped pull the sweatshirt down to his waist. She had bought big to accommodate whatever shrinking the cotton was going to do in the wash, and Tony looked young and a little lost in it for a moment.

Pepper smiled, letting both her affection and desire bleed into her expression, and said softly, “You’re mine now, Mr. Stark.”


End file.
